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While Bob Hope was indeed an immigrant, white anglo saxon protestant male immigrants are explicitly welcomed by the current shitocracy…
Being all male wasn’t a problem... Seriously? Your only response to the fact that 99.5%* of ICE detainees are male…
@Avvaa: I'm not sure even WASP male immigrants are welcome. There have been several tourists who have been detained because…
LOL, thanks!
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Monday Baby Blogging: Sydney Loves Daddy, But Wants The Camera
Posted in Baby & kid blogging
6 Comments
Feminist Classic Censored by Copyright Laws
Chances are, if you’re an American feminist, you’ve never read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Even if you’re a highly educated feminist who takes pride in having read at least a sample of all the important first- and second-wave feminists, you probably haven’t read her. Neither have I, even though I thought I had (it was assigned reading back when I was a Women’s Studies student).
You see, the real Simone de Beauvoir isn’t available in English – only in the original French. The English version I and many other English-reading feminists have read, is translated so badly that at times it says the exact opposite of what de Beauvoir intended. From a New York Times op-ed by Sarah Glazer:
Alfred Knopf, who thought the book ”capable of making a very wide appeal indeed” among ”young ladies in places like Smith,” sought out Howard Madison Parshley, a retired professor of zoology who had written a book on human reproduction and regularly reviewed books on sex for The New York Herald Tribune, to translate Beauvoir’s book. Parshley knew French only from his years as a student at Boston Latin School and Harvard, and had no training in philosophy — certainly not in the new movement known as existentialism, of which Beauvoir was an adherent.
”Parshley didn’t read anything about existentialism until he’d finished translating the whole book and thought he should find out something about it to write his introduction,” says Margaret A. Simons, professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and author of ”Beauvoir and ‘The Second Sex’ ” (1999).
A close student of Hegel and Heidegger, Beauvoir often referred to their work using specific terms French philosophers would have recognized, but that Parshley did not. Toril Moi, who has made a detailed analysis of the translation, noted for example that the word ”subject” generally refers in existentialism to a person who exercises freedom of choice, whereas Parshley understood ”subjective” in its everyday English sense to mean ”personal” or ”not objective.” In his hands, Beauvoir’s discussions of woman’s assertion of herself as a subject become platitudes implying women are incapable of being objective.
More damning, when Parshley encountered existentialist terms for existence — such as pour-soi, or ”being-for-itself” — vis-Ã -vis women’s lives, he often rendered them as woman’s ”true nature” or feminine ”essence,” notions that would have been anathema to Beauvoir, according to Moi. ”The idea of existentialism is ‘experience precedes essence.’ Existentialism means ‘You are what you do,’ ” she says.
In addition, about 150 pages of The Second Sex is cut out of the English language edition.
There are qualified translators who’d love to take on the project; there are publishers, such as Harvard University Press, eager to publish a better-translated, complete Second Sex.
But the publishing house Knopf has the exclusive English-language rights locked up until The Second Sex goes into the public domain – in 2056. Knopf refuses to do an updated transation themselves, and they refuse to allow anyone else to publish one, either.
So, it appears, that ends the matter. Translating The Second Sex is too big a job for anyone to do for free. The marketplace would pay someone to translate it – but our ridiculous copyright law won’t allow the free market to function.
UPDATE: See also this post, which has some impressive examples of bad translation follies and a link for a petition.
Bigotry Against Men In Childcare
There’s been a bit of a fuss recently about seating of children on airplanes in New Zealand. A man who was seated next to a child travelling alone was asked to change his seat, because the airline has a policy against men sitting next to unaccompanied minors. The man objected, the fuss reached the press, the airline claimed that it was only doing what most airlines do on international flights. (Why not domestic flights?) In the fallout, there have been many cogent objections to the policy:
Clinical psychologist Nigel Latta, from Dunedin, described the policy as “insane”.
Mr Latta agreed studies of sexual offenders showed somewhere between 70 and 90 percent were male but the airlines’ policy would not help protect children.
“In 15 years of working with thousands of sexual offenders I’ve never treated or heard of a man who sexually offended against a child on a plane.”
New Zealand’s Green Party says the airlines policy banning men from sitting next to unaccompanied children is discriminatory and will take the matter to the Human Rights Commissioner.
Green MP Keith Locke said the policy was an example of moral panic about men posing as potential threats to children.
They’re all quite correct: It is a stupid policy, it won’t help children, it’s discrimination, and it’s moral panic.
It’s also an extremely common and widespread bigotry, although not one usually codified in policy.
Reading about the New Zealand flap, I was reminded of a study by anthropologist Susan Murray that was published in the academic journal Gender and Society. The study’s subject was men who work in child care in the U.S.. From Murray’s article:
When men choose child care, their motives for making such a choice are questioned. In child care settings, this questioning occurs most often on those occasions when men get judged negatively for engaging in the same behaviors as their caregiving counterparts whoa re women – when they are suspect just for doing their jobs.
In my study, many workers, both men and women, talked about how the men who are child care workers are subject to different unwritten rules regarding their physical access ot children. Specifically, in many centers, men are more restricted in their freedom to touch, cuddle, nap, and change diapers for children. As one worker who I surveyed stated, “I have worked in centers that employ male caregivers. Parents have on occasion been hesitant to accept them. One parent explicitly asked that a male caregiver not rub her daughter’s back at naptime.” […]
…My data clearly showed numerous cases in which parents clearly did not want their children taken care of by a man at all. Sometimes parents requested another caregiver for their children; at other times, parents refused to enroll their children or withdrew them once they discovered a man was working at the center.
The article goes on to recount many other examples of male childcare workers being discriminated against in this exact way – men are not supposed to be in physical contact with children. Murray, in a discussion of the implications of this, suggests that the bigotry against male caregivers is rooted in sexism and in bigotry against gay men (even if the caregiver isn’t gay).
Men, both gay and straight, who work in child care challenge our culture’s dichotomous normative conceptions associated with “essential” manly and womanly “natures.” The claim that child care is “women’s work” may appear an oversimplification of reality; yet, when that boundary is crossed, consequences – as I have just demonstrated – are apparent. […]
In the case of men in child care, just the act of their caring for children calls into question their heterosexuality. The fact of their sexuality, whether gay or straight, need not ever be confirmed. It is their choice to do child care that arouses suspicion and leaves them vulnerable to homophobic reactions. Men’s actions become suspect because they are choosing to do something that women do and, even worse, because child care is undervalued employment for women. Gay is a sexualized identity. When a man admits to being, is discovered to be, or is suspected of being gay, his gay identity may come to define everything else. He is, then, seen as someone who is guided by sexual practices, thoughts, and feelings in all else he undertakes. Within the child care setting, anything having to do with adult sexuality is strictly off-limits. So, when a person’s identity as a gay person is discovered or even suspected (as may be the case with straight men doing “women’s work”), that person’s competence as a teacher/caregiver gets called into question. To the extent that being gay is viewed as a perversion, it is linked with other perversions, such as child sexual abuse.
Murray also discusses the “glass elevator” effect, in which men in childcare professions are promoted to administrative positions more often and more easily – an advantage to men who want to be administrators, but a disadvantage to ambitious women caregivers who’d like to advance, and to men who’d rather stay in direct childcare positions. The overall effect is to turn many child care centers into places where traditional gender roles are enforced.
Restricting men worker’s access to children (by comparison to the access for women workers) implies that men’s desire for access to children is pathological. In these and other ways, the organization of child care… systematically push men away from nurturing responsibilities and bind these responsibilities to women workers.[…]
[“Jeff,” a male childcare worker Murray interviewed, said:] “You just need to be ultracareful. In San Francisco the men Early Childhood Education teachers can’t have a child on their lap, the women can, but the men can’t. I’m thinking, what kind of a message does this send to the children?”
Murray concludes with the speculation that child care centers may be teaching children traditional gender roles: men as administrators and playmates, women as nurturers. This discrimination is bad for the men being discriminated against, and also bad for the girls and boys who are subjected to gender-discriminatory childcare.
Posted in Feminism, sexism, etc, Sexism hurts men
414 Comments
Jack Balkin on defending Roe v Wade
Two pro-choice law professors, Jack Balkin and Sanford Levinson, debate the question “Should Liberals Stop Defending Roe?” Balkin’s opening case, in favor of defending Roe, is a must-read:
If all this is true, why shouldn’t Democrats simply announce that they no longer support a constitutional right to abortion, or failing, that simply stop opposing efforts to overturn Roe? There are, I think, at least four reasons why this is a bad idea. First, one doesn’t “give up” on constitutional rights unless one is already convinced that they aren’t very important or don’t actually exist. Should liberals have given up on Brown v. Board of Education in 1962 when the going got rough if they genuinely believed that racial equality was a fundamental right of human beings? Or to take an example near and dear to your heart, Sandy, should we have given up on constitutional limits on presidential power and constitutional prohibitions on torture because most Americans thought our repeated carping on these issues unpatriotic, and that was bad for Democrats? If we don’t stand up for the constitutional rights we believe in when they are politically inconvenient, what is the point of having such rights? Thus, to convince me that we should give up on Roe you’ll first have to convince me (and many other people, too) that the right to abortion isn’t all that important to women’s liberty and equality; or that despite its importance, Bork and Scalia were right and that there is no such right in the Constitution. Second, we must consider the consequences. Although overruling Roe will not change the law of abortion in liberal states like New York, it will produce significant restrictions on abortion in a very large number of other states, and outright prohibitions in a handful of still other states. In a post-Roe world, abortion will probably still be available somewhere in the United States. Even so, we will probably return to a world (indeed, a world we are already approaching under current doctrine) in which abortions are freely available to the rich but not the poor. Obtaining an abortion in another state requires time to travel, making excuses (i.e., lying) to employers and to family members about one’s whereabouts, and considerable expense. Many states currently have waiting periods, and no doubt more states will adopt them…with more draconian requirements-if Roe is overruled. Current waiting period requirements increase the costs of abortion considerably because they often require two separate trips. That expense-and the deterrent effect on the poor-can only increase in a post-Roe world. Lack of access to safe and affordable abortion for poor women increases health risks for those women, and condemns them to lives of increasing economic hardship and dependency, not to mention the costs to society as a whole. The Democratic party has long claimed to stand for sex equality and for economic justice. Capitulating on Roe is inconsistent with both commitments. Third, the conventional wisdom that overruling Roe will simply return abortion to the states underestimates the strategy, the devotion, and the ambitions of the pro-life movement. If abortion is murder in Alabama, it is equally murder in New York. The pro-life movement will almost certainly push for a national solution to the abortion problem, which means that we may get more restrictive federal abortion legislation that will preempt liberal laws like those in New York. No doubt a nationwide ban on abortion is not politically feasible in the short run; what is feasible, however, even with the changed political climate that we both imagine, are significant restrictions on abortion at the federal level, especially if the Republicans maintain control over at least one branch of Congress. Moreover, if Republicans control the White House, they can do enormous mischief to abortion rights nationwide through administrative regulations that have the force of law and preempt more liberal state laws to the contrary. Fourth, giving up on Roe in practice will take down more than Roe itself. It will put enormous pressure on other Supreme Court precedents that protect people from state interference in matters of family life, contraception, and sexual autonomy. The pressure is not logical but ideological. It is easy enough for a lawyer to distinguish Roe from earlier cases protecting the right to use contraceptives (Griswold, Eisenstadt, Carey) and later cases protecting the right to same-sex intimacies (Lawrence v. Texas). After all, neither contraception nor same sex sodomy involves the destruction of an embryo or fetus. Nevertheless, this fails to account for how Roe would be overruled in practice. Imagine how one would “give up.” You can’t send secret signals to the liberal justices saying “psst, hey Ruth Bader Ginsburg, take a fall on the next abortion case.” Rather, giving up on Roe means not opposing new Republican judicial nominees who are committed to overturning Roe (as opposed to merely limiting it). But those sorts of judges will likely oppose much of the other existing jurisprudence on sexual autonomy. The opinions they write will likely emphasize that it is wholly illegitimate for courts to discover and enforce rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution (unless, of course, it’s unenumerated rights that conservatives happen to like! See the federalism decisions). Whether or not cases like Lawrence are technically distinguishable by well-trained lawyers, they may not be distinguishable in the view of the new Supreme Court majority. There’s more; you can read the whole thing here. (Hat tip: The Debate Link.)…We both agree that Roe helps keep the Republican coalition together. With the basic right to abortion secured, the legislative debate centers largely around issues like parental notification, mandatory waiting periods, and bans on partial birth techniques. With Roe gone, criminalization of most abortions would be on the table, and, not surprisingly, the most devoted elements of the Republican Party’s pro-life base will probably demand that Republican candidates support this position. Some number of libertarians, suburbanites, and women who fall into neither category would leave the party; not that many would have to do so to swing elections to the Democrats.
Lies About Lies The ACLU (didn't) Tell
This piece by David Tell in the Weekly Standard has been getting a lot of play in the right blogosphere. The bit the conservatives are focusing on? Tell’s accusation that the ACLU has told terrible lies which the mainstream press has uncritically repeated.
A frequent complaint of conservative blogs is that the mainstream media didn’t factcheck the ACLU before releasing its report. For instance, Media Lies writes:
But as far as I can tell, none of the conservative bloggers bothered to check David Tell’s “facts.” If they had, they might have known that this story is not as clear-cut as they believe. From Tell’s article: That number wasn’t even close to accurate. The documents show that military medical examiners attributed 19 of the 43 deaths to natural causes, 2 others to factors as yet “undetermined,” called one further death an “accident,” and left the “manner of death” box in 8 case files entirely blank. There were 13 official “homicides,” not 21. And documents associated with at most 5 of those homicides contain even the vaguest hint of possible wrongdoing by American personnel. The other 8 appear to have been “homicides” only in the technical sense that mortuary physicians use the term…to indicate any nonaccidental death resulting from human agency, whether sinister or innocent. And what would an entirely innocent homicide look like, you ask? Innocence is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but try this on for size: Two of the very same “homicides” the ACLU has for two months now been content to cite as evidence of “widespread” human rights abuses involve wounded Iraqi insurgents captured after armed engagements with American troops. Both men were evacuated to U.S. hospitals where surgeons attempted to save their lives. But neither man survived his injuries. Not the sort of thing they investigate on “Law and Order.” And not the sort of thing that American newspapers and television networks any longer investigate either, apparently. The ACLU’s October 24 press release was extensively covered in the press. And its “21 homicides, many under questionable circumstances” datum has since become a “fact,” inevitably cited in an endless stream of stories about our current government’s peculiar propensity for torture and other such subhuman activities. No one seems to have noticed that the whole thing is bogus. Let’s take Tell’s last paragraph first – was the ACLU press release “extensively covered in the press”? I did a Lexis search for stories in major newspapers since October 20 with the words “ACLU” and “detainees” anywhere in the text. I found one full story reporting on the ACLU’s claim (“Autopsies Support Abuse Allegations,” LA Times, 10/25/2005), and three other mentions (“21 die from interrogation,” The Advertiser, 10/26/2005; “National Briefs,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/26/2005; “Controversy grows over legal status of detainees,” Financial Times, 10/27/2005). Contrary to Tell’s narrative, it’s clear that that mainstream newspapers virtually all ignored this story. (I want to point out that The Advertiser‘s headline is egregiously wrong, although the story below the headline was accurate. But since I’ve never heard of The Advertiser before today’s Lexis search, I doubt it’s a major media organ.) Furthermore, every one of those four stories prominently mentions an important fact that Tell left out. Here’s the first paragraph of the LA Times story: Here’s the second paragraph of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette’s coverage: The other two reported it the same way – “The ACLU said eight detainees appeared to have died during or after interrogation by Navy Seals, Military Intelligence and OGA,” as The Financial Times put it, and “the group characterised 21 as homicides, and said at least eight resulted from abusive techniques by military or intelligence officers,” as The Advertiser put it. So every story I could find in the press mentions that the ACLU claimed that eight – not 21 – died from being tortured or abused by U.S. personnel. And that’s what the ACLU’s press release says, too: So, in fact, the ACLU and the press have only claimed that “at least eight” of the deaths are attributable to abuse by U.S. personnel. If the ACLU’s documents contain “at least eight” such deaths – and as we’ll see, they do – then the accusations that the ACLU has lied are unfounded. But first, let’s look at another of Tell’s claims. Tell writes: That number wasn’t even close to accurate. […] There were 13 official “homicides,” not 21. But hold on a moment – the ACLU’s press release never claims that “the Pentagon itself had labeled 21… deaths ‘homicide.'” The ACLU report never refers to “official homicides.” But you’d never know that from Tell’s account. The truth is, both Tell and the ACLU are being squirrley here. The ACLU claims that “according to the documents,” there are 21 homicides – but, technically, it never says that the Pentagon itself has officially labeled all them as homicides. Still, the phrasing could easily be read that way. 3 of the 4 newspaper reports I found didn’t get misled – all three attribute the 21 homicide count to the ACLU, not to the government – but one paper, The Financial Times, got it wrong. The ACLU press release gives details about some of the deaths they classified as “homicide.” The first death they describe is this one: Note that cause of death is “undetermined,” not “homicide.” So despite a single misleading phrase, the ACLU’s press release didn’t hide the fact that their homicide count includes deaths not classified as “homicide” by the government. I do agree with Tell that the ACLU appears to be counting some ambiguous cases as “homicide,” merely because the government has officially labeled them homicides (for an example, a case of a prisoner suffering fatal injuries during an escape attempt). So a point goes to Mr. Tell there. Finally, let’s look at the most important, substantive point: Are there, in fact, 8 deaths described in the ACLU documents that could reasonably be described as caused by abuse or torture by U.S. personnel? Yes, there are. The ACLU press release lists the following four cases in enough detail to convince me, and I think most reasonable people, that we’re talking about homicide due to actions by US personnel. An Iraqi detainee (also described as a white male) died on January 9, 2004, in Al Asad, Iraq, while being interrogated by “OGA.” He was standing, shackled to the top of a door frame with a gag in his mouth at the time he died. The cause of death was asphyxia and blunt force injuries. […] A detainee was smothered to death during an interrogation by Military Intelligence on November 26, 2003, in Al Qaim, Iraq.[…] A detainee at Abu Ghraib Prison, captured by Navy Seal Team number seven, died on November 4, 2003, during an interrogation by Navy Seals and “OGA.” A previously released autopsy report, that appears to be of Manadel Al Jamadi, shows that the cause of his death was “blunt force injury complicated by compromised respiration.” […] The other four deaths aren’t described in much detail in the ACLU press release – but reading the documents and researching the names has convinced me that the ACLU’s assessment is certainly defensible, and probably correct. From the ACLU’s press release: The autopsy report (pdf link) indicates that his beaten-to-death body was found “under guard by the Afghanistan Militia Forces.” So why is the ACLU blaming this one on the US Military? Because this appears to be Abdul Wahid’s autopsy, and the US Military has admitted that Abdul Wahid died in American custody (see this CBS news report). To me, this seems like the only one of the 8 deaths the ACLU refers to that can reasonably be questioned; and even here, the only question is if he was beaten to death by us or by our allies, and the US military appears to believe that it’s us. Then there’s this case: The ACLU’s press release should have mentioned that he was strangled to death while “in isolation,” according to the autopsy report (pdf link). I guess Tell would say that we don’t really know who killed this man; however, it doesn’t seem plausible that anyone who wasn’t part of the US military could manage to murder a prisoner in isolation in a US military prison. Finally, there are the cases of Mullah Habibullah, a 30-year-old beaten to death in a U.S. prison “with his arms shackled and tied to a beam in the ceiling”; and Dilawar, who was “beaten by guards and interrogators, some of whom stood with their full weight on top of him, concentrating on his groin.” Although neither case was described in detail by the ACLU’s press release, both are in the ACLU’s document collection, and both are certainly cases of homicide by US personnel. Total score: Six clear-cut cases of deaths caused by abuse and torture by American personnel, plus two likely but somewhat ambiguous cases. Tell’s claim that “at most 5 of those homicides contain even the vaguest hint of possible wrongdoing by American personnel” is not only nonsense, it’s reprehensible nonsense. By characterising six fairly clear-cut cases of prisoners being beaten and/or tortured to death as just “the vaguest hint of possible wrongdoing,” Tell is in effect minimizing and excusing murder and torture. Shame on him. On the whole, neither the ACLU nor The Weekly Standard‘s Tell looks perfect – but from what I can tell, the ACLU has much less reason for shame than The Weekly Standard. 1) On the anti-ACLU side, the ACLU may have messed up its count of homicides; its press release contained one sentence which could be read as saying that the “homicide” count was according to the US military’s official designations (the press release as a whole clearly discussed homicides regardless of official designation); and its count included some officially-designated homicides that I think are actually ambiguous. Finally, the ACLU’s primary claim was that 8 detainees have been murdered by American personnel; however, it seems to me that only 6 of the 8 cases are certain. 2) On the anti-Weekly Standard side, the Weekly Standard failed to mention that the ACLU’s primary claim was that 8 detainees have been murdered by American personnel, and that this was how the ACLU’s claim was reported in the mainstream press. Judging from a Lexis search of major newspapers, the Weekly Standard also vastly exaggerated the coverage the ACLU press release received; in fact, this story was overwhelmingly ignored by mainstream media. Finally, and most inexcusably, the Weekly Standard characterized clear-cut cases of detainee death due to inexcusable abuse by American personnel as containing only “the vaguest hint of possible wrongdoing.” In the ensuing discussion, let’s not forget that quibbling over how many documented torture deaths there are in this report (six? eight?) shouldn’t become an excuse for brushing aside the real moral point: even one such death, let alone six or eight, is entirely inexcusable. * * * By the way, check out the comments following this post on Protein Wisdom, in which several of the participants are discussing, in apparent seriousness, “Is there anyway the government could have [the ACLU] shut down once and for all?” Nothing at all fascist about that…None of these facts will keep the ACLU from trumpeting their lies, nor will it keep the media from “frontpaging” those lies. Both groups of liars believe that the American people will never check their “facts”.
On October 24, the ACLU made public an analysis of several dozen autopsy reports and related documents obtained from the Pentagon by means of a Freedom of Information Act request for records concerning foreigners detained in Afghanistan and Iraq. The deaths-in-custody of 44 such detainees were detailed in those documents, according to the ACLU’s press release and accompanying explanatory chart. According to the original documents themselves…which are posted on the ACLU’s website…the actual number of deaths involved appears to be only 43. But never mind about that. More to the point…the intended point being, in the words of the press release, that “U.S. operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogation”…was the contention that the Pentagon itself had labeled 21 of these 43 deaths “homicide.”
Autopsy reports on 44 prisoners who died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that 21 were victims of homicide, including eight who appear to have been fatally abused by their captors, the American Civil Liberties Union reported Monday.
The analysis, released yesterday, looked at 44 deaths described in records obtained by the ACLU. Of those, the group characterized 21 as homicides, and said at least eight resulted from abusive techniques by military or intelligence officers, such as strangulation or “blunt force injuries,” as noted in the autopsy reports.
According to the documents, 21 of the 44 deaths were homicides. Eight of the homicides appear to have resulted from abusive techniques used on detainees, in some instances, by the CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence personnel.
More to the point…the intended point being, in the words of the press release, that “U.S. operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogation”…was the contention that the Pentagon itself had labeled 21 of these 43 deaths “homicide.”
A 27-year-old Iraqi male died while being interrogated by Navy Seals on April 5, 2004, in Mosul, Iraq. During his confinement he was hooded, flex-cuffed, sleep deprived and subjected to hot and cold environmental conditions, including the use of cold water on his body and hood. The exact cause of death was “undetermined” although the autopsy stated that hypothermia may have contributed to his death. Notes say he “struggled/ interrogated/ died sleeping.”
A 27-year-old Iraqi male died while being interrogated by Navy Seals on April 5, 2004, in Mosul, Iraq. During his confinement he was hooded, flex-cuffed, sleep deprived and subjected to hot and cold environmental conditions, including the use of cold water on his body and hood. […]
An Afghan civilian died from “multiple blunt force injuries to head, torso and extremities” on November 6, 2003, at a Forward Operating Base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (Facts in the autopsy report appear to match the previously reported case of Abdul Wahid.)
A 52-year-old male Iraqi was strangled to death at the Whitehorse detainment facility on June 6, 2003, in Nasiriyah, Iraq.
Posted in International issues, Iraq
14 Comments
Gee, maybe taking steroids isn't so bad
Randy Radley Balko questions if Congress really has any business preaching fairness to pro ball players:
Representative Davis and fellow baseball antagonists say steroids and amphetamines give athletes an “unfair advantage” over the competition. Never mind that after the 2000 census, Davis led efforts to gerrymander his own congressional district to ensure he’d never need to worry about re-election. Due to gerrymandering, Davis ran unopposed in 2002, as did one in five of his congressional colleagues.
Davis also recently sneaked a provision into federal legislation that prevented an apartment complex from going up in his district because, according to the Washington Post, he feared it would bring too many Democrats into the area.
Via Hit and Run.
Posted in Elections and politics
10 Comments
What Other People Are Saying
By the way, if you have a link you’d like other “Alas” readers to see, or just something you’d like to say that isn’t on-topic in one of the other threads, please feel free to post it in these “link farm” posts.
What do people think of these big “link farm” posts? Do you like them? Would you like them better if I split each one up into a whole bunch of one-item posts instead?
Anyway, here’s some stuff I’ve read today and really liked. Note that the stuff in quote marks is written by the people I’m linking to, not by me.
The Best Post I’ve Read This Year Carole Joffe’s Open Letter To Dalton Conley Twisty on Culture (By the way, take note of I Blame The Patriarchy’s shiney new URL.) Yes, Virginia, There Are Mean People On Both Sides Sentenced to Death for Self Defense Battlepanda has a long, long list of blogs commenting on the Cory Maye – he’s running a competition to see if the rightosphere, the leftosphere, or the libertarians generate the most links publicizing this case. Poll: Most Pharmacists Want Right To Refuse Women Birth Control Link via Earl at Prometheus 6, who has a modest proposal: “Pharmacists that refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions should have to raise the kid.” Women In Their 20s Gain Income Every Year They Delay Motherhood The full article has interesting details describing how this study was carried out; the researcher was very clever in her approach.
“I’ve decided that there must be a giddy sense of power that comes from being able to command poor people to stand in line, at the drop of a hat.” Kactus describes a monday afternoon at the welfare office. Via Bradford Plumer, whose post also quotes David Shipler on welfare cheats: “The more damaging welfare cheats are the caseworkers and other officials who contrive to discourage or reject perfectly eligible families.”
“Like you, I am a passionate believer in public sociology, and think its recent revitalization is one of the best things that has occurred in our discipline in years. I commend you for your many writings that are accessible to an audience beyond sociology. But in the case of this op-ed, I believe you have acted irresponsibly, and have done harm to a cause in which you profess to believe. Quite frankly, rather than seeing your op-ed as authentic public sociology, I view it as inappropriate ‘private sociology.’ Based on your individual experience with a contested pregnancy, you are attempting to intervene in a policy arena that you seemingly know very little about.”
“As you know, I am the world’s foremost authority on the status of women in Fiji, so you can believe me when I say that if chumps in their own government are advocating pickling women in the good old pre-feminist brine so that they’ll conform to some kind of quaint “national identity” dictated by crowd-pleasin’ hair-dos, it can’t be good. In fact, it looks to me like they’re wanting to put the kibosh on women’s rights because they fuck with Fiji’s brand.”
Cathy Young points out what should be obvious about US politics: ‘There is nastiness and ugliness aplenty on both sides, regardless of the exact forms it takes. ” That should be a truism, but there are oodles of people on both sides who seemingly think that the other side has a near-monopoly on hate. I disagree with some of Cathy’s particulars, but her overall post is spot-on.
“Let’s summarize: Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn’t named in the warrant, and wasn’t a suspect. The man, frightened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door’s been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town’s police chief. He’s later convicted and sentenced to death by a [mostly] white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid. The story gets more bizarre from there.”
“The more relevant finding was that about 39 percent of the pharmacists felt they should be able to refuse to fill a legal prescription, apart from another 37 percent who felt they should be able to refuse with a referral to a more cooperative pharmacist. (Only 23 percent said that a patient’s legal rights should prevail over the pharmacist’s misgivings.) […] If nothing else, there seems to be a vast difference of opinion between pharmacists and physicians–a previous survey of doctors by HCD Research found that 78 percent of physicians thought that pharmacists should be obliged to provide emergency contraception.”
“So, if you have your first child at 24 instead of 25, you’re giving up 10 percent of your lifetime earnings. The wage hit comes in two pieces. There’s an immediate drop, followed by a slower rate of growth…right up to the day you retire. So, a 34-year-old woman with a 10-year-old child will (again on average) get smaller percentage raises on a smaller base salary than an otherwise identical woman with a 9-year-old. Each year of delayed childbirth compounds these benefits, at least for women in their 20s. Once you’re in your 30s, there’s far less reward for continued delay. Surprisingly, it appears that none of these effects are mitigated by the passage of family-leave laws.”
Choice For Men: Do Feminists and Pro-Lifers Make The Same Argument?
Quite a while ago, regarding the “Choice for Men” debate, Cathy Young asked me:
I’m sure you’re aware that your arguments about the choices that men do have echo with an uncanny precision the arguments made by abortion rights opponents — that women have the choice not to get pregnant.
Yes, but the comparison is misleading; it implies that the disparity is caused by hypocrisy in the feminist position, when the disparity is actually caused by differences in male and female anatomy. (No pro-choicer would deny men the right to abortion, if men were physically capable of pregnancy.)
When pro-lifers say women’s chance to decide about parenthood is before pregnancy happens, what they really mean is, “I want to deny you one of your medically viable options.” There’s no reason, except for pro-life laws, that women can’t get an abortion after pregnancy begins.
In contrast, when I say men’s chance to decide about parenthood is before pregnancy happens, that’s a statement of biological fact. It’s not an argument in favor of denying men viable medical options; it’s an observation that men physically lack those options.
Although the statements look similar on the surface, the substantive difference between the two positions is enormous, and can’t fairly be overlooked.
Posted in Choice for Men
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